Education

1 Look at the different types of educational establishments below. Match them

to the sort of person who might attend them.
A co-educational secondary school
A primary school for infants and juniors
A sixth-form college
A nursery school
A further education college offering evening classes
A university
A public school
A five-year-old and a nine-year-old
A thirty-six-year old office worker who wants to get better at computer skills
A seventeen-year-old who hopes to go on to higher education
A twenty-year-old who wants to be a doctor
A thirteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy
A fifteen-year-old whose parents want to pay for his/her education
A three-year-old
2 Look at the phrases below. Which phrases would you expect to find
mentioned in a state secondary school, which in a university, and which in
both?

pay course fees

play truant
take an exam
get a grant
cram for end-of-term exams
graduate with honours in Chemistry
have a weekly tutorial
do homework
attend a lecture
pay attention
give a seminar on William Shakespeare
take a degree
take the register

Match some of the words above to the definitions below.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

study really hard

get a degree
a one-to-one talk
government money to help you pay for the course
not go to school, even though youre not ill

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3 Which verb does not collocate in each sentence?

a. I must work hard, because next Tuesday I have to ____________ an
exam.
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

Make
Sit
Take
Pass
Do

b. Im planning to ______________ a course in Computing.

i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

Take
Do
Enrol on
Make
Begin

c. The teacher ______________ us a really difficult test on phrasal verbs.

i. Gave
ii. Set
iii. Made
d. At the end of term students have to spend hours ____________ what they
have learnt.
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.

Revising
Going over
Taking up
Studying

e. Schools ________________ for the summer holidays in July.

i.
ii.
iii.
iv.

Break up
End up
Close
Shut
4 Look at these idiomatic expressions using learn. Rewrite the sentences
below using the expressions.

learn off by heart

learn by rote
learn the ropes
learn (ones) lesson
a quick learner

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a. Starting a new job is difficult because you have to learn all the basic things
that you dont yet know.
b. He was able to pick up everything about the sport in no time at all.
c. We had to remember all the words of the song before the concert.
d. The child, who ran in the school corridor, fell over and banged his head.
He now knows never to do that again.
e. When my grandfather was at school he had to memorise all the facts that
the teacher told him.
5 Read the passage below, filling in the gaps with the names of the
educational establishments mentioned in exercise 1
The school system in England
Pre-school education is provided by state or private ______________.
Children as young as two are often left by their parents while they go to work.
Children usually start ________________ when they are five. Then they go
on to a state ________________, often called a comprehensive school. In the
private sector, children often go to a prep school, before going on to
_________________ when they are five or six. Many children often leave
school at sixteen, after they take their GCSE exams, but some stay on to take
their A level exams at school or __________________, before going on to
_________________.
6
Prepare to talk about the school system in your country, and your own
experience of education. Discuss it with your partner.
7
Write about the school system in your country.

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